Local reaction to pope's resignation: Shock, sympathy

DeSales prof: Benedict's decision in line with his character

In an institution given to reckoning time in centuries, Pope Benedict's announcement Monday that he would resign the Chair of Peter just two weeks hence constituted a genuine bombshell.

A papal resignation hadn't happened in some 600 years, after all. But Benedict — the former Joseph Ratzinger, elevated to the papacy in 2005 at age 78 and soon to turn 86 — said he simply doesn't have the strength to do the job anymore.

"Shock is understandable given the history of the institution," said Brennan Pursell, a DeSales University history professor who wrote a well-received book on the pope, "Benedict of Bavaria: An Intimate Portrait of the Pope and His Homeland."

"But with Ratzinger," Pursell said, "it makes sense. He's always described the papal office as an office. It's not a kingship. It's not a monarchy. And according to canon law, a pope can resign as long as it's a free decision."

Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, died in office after a quarter-century papacy marked, in the end, by deep physical suffering that kept him from fulfilling many aspects of the job.

Pursell surmises Benedict didn't want to follow the same path, preferring to turn the office over to an abler man.

"On the personal side, is this surprising?" Pursell said. "They stuck him with the job at 78 when he was ready to retire. He didn't want the job, but was honoring the wishes of his fellow cardinals. He put in eight years, he's 85 and the demands are tremendous. He made a rational assessment and says he didn't have it in him."

Pursell's colleague at the Catholic college in Center Valley, theologian Larry Chapp, said Benedict wants a "more vigorous hand" guiding the church in coming years.

"I think he sees storm clouds on the horizon," Chapp said. "The church is facing all kinds of challenges and crises around the world."

At home, too. The Vatican has been embroiled in a number of financial and other scandals, including one in which the pope's personal butler was convicted of leaking classified documents.

"He's aware that offices at the Vatican, the Curia, need some shaking up," Chapp said. "He is too old and weak to do that and he's saying, 'We need a housecleaning and a guy who can come in and do that.' "

Allentown Bishop John O. Barres reacted to the pope's announcement by recalling a couple of personal encounters with Benedict.

"I have a wonderful memory of going to the North American College in Rome during my graduate student priest days," Barres wrote in a statement. "As I walked down the Janiculum Hill one night, I came upon then Cardinal Ratzinger, who was walking up the hill on the other side of the street. He gave me this radiant smile after his long day and waved. It touched me deeply."

In December 2011, Pennsylvania bishops visited Benedict and had what Barres called a "wonderful and animated discussion" with the pope. "I had the opportunity to thank him personally for his recent catechesis on prayer in which he teaches the universal Church the importance of sacrificing deeply to pray deeply," Barres wrote.

The bishop said Benedict's decision was "an act of great courage and humility."

During his papacy, leading a worldwide flock of more than 1 billion Catholics, Benedict surprised and confounded many observers and critics. As cardinal, he had earned a reputation as "God's Rottweiler" for his vigorous correction of wayward theologians on matters of Catholic doctrine.

But his personality and his thinking were always far more subtle than that tag suggested. Indeed, Pursell said Benedict is one of the most admired scholars of the modern church, and has a warm, somewhat shy personality that belies the media caricature of a hidebound arch-conservative.

"He is going to go down as one of the great teachers of the 20th century, and the 21st," Pursell said.

With the church growing in the Southern Hemisphere, the pope engaged in an effort to renew the flagging Christian faith in Europe — something he had signaled by taking the name Benedict in honor of St. Benedict of Nursia, the founder of Western monasticism.

But the pope's road was difficult from the outset. He was hit repeatedly with fresh eruptions of clergy abuse in Europe and the United States. And, in a 2006 lecture on the relationship of faith and reason in Regensburg, Germany, his quoting of a 14th century critic of Islam sparked deadly riots in the Muslim world.

Still, Benedict wrote widely and influentially on theological topics, completed a trilogy on the life of Jesus and made strides toward reconciling the often confusing aftermath of Vatican II — the "opening" of the church to the world — with millenniums of tradition.

For example, he loosened strictures on the celebration of the old Latin Mass, in hopes that the celebration of that form would have a positive effect on the Novus Ordo Mass that followed Vatican II — and, conversely, that the new Mass would influence the old.